Either that, or many long term hobby joggers are much further away from maximum fitness than I would expect.
Hobby jogger runs 1km in 3min and is toast. If they can do it.
Strong runner runs half marathon at 3min pace and might not even make headlines, podium whatever. Heck the recent 5km and 10km turkey trots here were won at sub 3/km pace.
It is quite obvious that your 17min+ hobby jogger is worlds off maximum fitness in both absolute as well as relative terms.
It's not about absolute performance ability, it's about how much/effectively people actually train.
Simply put, it would surprise me if someone running 30+ miles/5+ days per week would have so much left in the tank to still drop multiple minutes off their 5 km time based on changes in fitness alone.
This is partially why I hypothesize that there may be velocity specific improvements in running economy, and hence why I asked if any Stryd users had noted, e.g., changes in LSS.
The other reason is that I know that my own running economy has improved by ~15% when I have run regularly at "sub LT" paces.
Wasn't Magness whole video basically an acknowledgement to sirpoc?
I still think Magness had good intentions. He could have not given NSM the time of day & after coming on here to defend himself likely wishes he didn't.
Maybe but maybe he was just trying to ride the hype train for his own benefit. He acknowledged the method exists and went straight to pointing out the shortcomings. (Anyway I'm just repeating what others have said above).
He probably has good intentions, having shared so much running info for free. I give him that. Still he's now looking like the dinosaur coach or scientist that fails to go with the times.
It's not about absolute performance ability, it's about how much/effectively people actually train.
Simply put, it would surprise me if someone running 30+ miles/5+ days per week would have so much left in the tank to still drop multiple minutes off their 5 km time based on changes in fitness alone.
You can't train running economy without touching v02max and/or lactate treshold. You can't train lactate treshold without touching v02max and/or running economy. You can't train v02max without touching running economy and/or lactate treshold.
If you believe he was only capable of breaking 19 for a 5k as a good/great cyclist with a sound knowledge of endurance training, I don't know what to say. He also had a following as a cyclist and talked about training often. I came from cycling also at 50 and within 1 year was sub 17 using basic 80/20 training. I think his NSM is better than 80/20 and I'm a fan of his training.
You obviously get excited about him not being able to lower his slow 5k time before NSM. That is what sells and if you want to believe it, up to you.
His plan is solid and I bet his book would be worth a read. Where are all his Strava activities before he appeared on the letsrun scene? He was on Strava and bragged about KOMs but they are almost all deleted. Go figure :) I knew the story was full of holes and went to Strava to verify but all his pre letsrun thread activities are deleted.
15 days into NSM and I am confident it will produce great results.
sirpoc is honest...not sure where this is coming from? I like most of your post re: NSM but am just confused...did he actually do this?
You can't train running economy without touching v02max and/or lactate treshold. You can't train lactate treshold without touching v02max and/or running economy. You can't train v02max without touching running economy and/or lactate treshold.
Fitness is just how fast you run.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.
VO2max, lactate threshold, and running economy are indeed the three determinants of performance, and are indeed interrelated. However, that doesn't mean that you can't improve one without improving the others.
As for "fitness", I was essentially referring to the combination of VO2max and lactate threshold.
Now if you want to argue that the word is synonymous with performance ("fitness for purpose") and that performance trumps all, well, I'm not going to argue with you, because it can be taken that way as well.
sirpoc is honest...not sure where this is coming from? I like most of your post re: NSM but am just confused...did he actually do this?
There are tons of sirpoc activities from way back. Some going back to 2012. I even found his duathlon on there he has spoken about, from before he even ran properly. It's sporadic, but a lot of the cycling goes back a long way and even to before when automatic upload was a thing. You actually had to plug your Garmin in if you wanted Kudos :)
Running is also sporadic from when he started. He mentioned before he only really started uploading everything when people became interested. You can easily see many of his KOMs for cycling time trial courses and this is from over a decade ago now.
I really don't think you can be much more open with training that you can basically go on his Strava and see his whole training for the last few years training like this. He's also given us all his information like threshold, max HR, anything we want to analyse his training.
It's part of the reason this has been such an open forum.
There are tons of sirpoc activities from way back. Some going back to 2012. I even found his duathlon on there he has spoken about, from before he even ran properly. It's sporadic, but a lot of the cycling goes back a long way and even to before when automatic upload was a thing. You actually had to plug your Garmin in if you wanted Kudos :)
Running is also sporadic from when he started. He mentioned before he only really started uploading everything when people became interested. You can easily see many of his KOMs for cycling time trial courses and this is from over a decade ago now.
I really don't think you can be much more open with training that you can basically go on his Strava and see his whole training for the last few years training like this. He's also given us all his information like threshold, max HR, anything we want to analyse his training.
It's part of the reason this has been such an open forum.
No gps from the runs, just manual timings. But I looked the results up they were available online and they were correct. He ran around 20 flat for both legs each 4.4k and a very poor transition. I would imagine from data around the time, he was incredibly fit as this was his best season cycling.
On here he said he never trained for the run and just turned up. He came 3rd overall and beat everyone by a large margin in the bike, went into the last run miles in the lead but got caught twice and finished third. I think one of them caught him for 4-5 minutes in 4.4k. so he was losing over a minute per km on the run.
It shows you how fit cyclists are, but they lack any kind of running economy or muscle strength to really put in a respectful running performance.
No gps from the runs, just manual timings. But I looked the results up they were available online and they were correct. He ran around 20 flat for both legs each 4.4k and a very poor transition. I would imagine from data around the time, he was incredibly fit as this was his best season cycling.
On here he said he never trained for the run and just turned up.
sirpoc is honest...not sure where this is coming from? I like most of your post re: NSM but am just confused...did he actually do this?
I posted a while back. My claim to fame in the thread was how I used to beat sirpoc at the parkrun local to us. It didn't even cross my mind he was the same person from this thread. Again, all I can tell you is the results are out there and not only that, he was very average for a while. I mean it's not rocket science, his training was inconsistent, never really built any load. No wonder he didn't really improve. I'm sure many of us have experienced this. Unfortunately, now even training like this myself I'm still behind him again ha ha
It really is just about what consistency can do over a period of time. That's what NSM brings. People are totally underestimating how much years of being injury free and stacking load brings. Many people won't unlock anything like their potential until they do this.
I think Magness and anyone who has been in the running game for a while, fails to understand the impact of load. They don't seem to believe in it. Which is where cycling was when I first got into it as a teenager, semi dark ages. A decent understanding of peaking for an event, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes up training.
As soon as cyclists discovered how to semi accurately measure and assess load, training became better, people could hold fitness across the down seasons and in general, w/kg in the peloton went up. The actual amount of time spent training has probably come down, (less fatigue), but the quality and recovery from load has gone up.
That doesn't mean every old school running coach is wrong. But there are a lot of them still stuck in ways that you would now have to go back decades to find in other sports. It'll take running longer for them to wash through the system, but most of them are gone in cycling.
Often it's a little strange, as many of the really old school coaches saw mileage as king. Which, as the NSM author points out, is really just a rudimentary way and descriptor of more load.
Sweet spot is important to understand, as all it is doing is maximising the time you have training. It's very difficult to throw much else into the mix when you are using it to it's full potential. Of course it's not the only way a hobby person can train, but it's more than likely the best.
I think hobby jogging has been a problem for a while. A lot of injuries, a lot of burnout, a lot of ramping up too hard.
What sirpoc I think has done is different for this reason. Usually, those within running, try to solve problems by just using an idea that has been handed down to them. An already established idea then their twist on it.
The difference here is we are actually going back to basics, which is ideas the coaches of today have forgotten all about. They have so over complicated things, it's actually made a bit of a mess of training philosophies. There's so much focus on things that have some impact, but little, they have totally forgotten you probably can go years building a base before gou really need anything else. What we have in this thread/ the book is a structured and crafted way to do just that along with the tools to pull it off.
I genuinely do think it took someone outside of the bubble, to put a twist on things for amateurs that is so simple, it's become hard for some people to accept. Sure, there are layers to it, the book is great at peeling that back. But, ultimately training is simple. Much like Bakken developed a mode and method that is probably the most optimal for pros, here we have the equivalent for hobby joggers.
A bit off topic here but has anyone done a reverse sirpoc? IE, a long time runner that converted to cycling.
I've only done running as my only fitness activity in my life, and although I like it, I struggle with the fact that my body just isn't suited for it. NSM over the last several months has been a good last ditch effort to save it, but I'm never going to be fast.
I got zwift ride a year or so ago and have just used it for cross training, but the book going into sirpocs background has made me think a lot about why I don't just take that more seriously. What makes my physiology bad at running might be a benefit in cycling, especially flat time trials (I'm all slow twitch but carry a lot of mass, especially in the legs).
There isn't really a time trial scene here and I don't think I have the balls to get into the crits, but nowadays there's online stuff which seems like it could be at least as interesting as the thrilling age group competition at podunk fun runs.
Feel like there's also the advantage of being able to handle more training load, and also never worrying about the weather.
I'm right at about 4.0 w/kg ftp pretty much untrained (ramp test so it might be off), I have to think I could push that by 10% with a year of training. 80kg lean and I think absolute watts are what matters for flat TT?
What kind of resources are out there for this stuff? I know literally nothing about cycling. I think I found the British TT forum that he talks about in the book but it seems dead. Didn't we have some world class guy in here last week?
I'm relatively new to the NSM mindset and have been following a looser version of it for about 6 months now. I've also read most of this thread. I've been doing 2-3 sub-T workouts per week (mostly 15K, HM, and 30K pace intervals) and the rest very easy. It's been going well so far and I'm seeing big improvements in consistency and load.
But the only problem is when it comes to racing all out 5Ks. The first time I raced a full 5K I did mini TTs beforehand, running up to 2K at my goal 5K race pace. I also did around 4 fast strides after easy runs about 3 times a week. Then after I raced the whole 5K I felt good after and was able to jump back into normal training immediately afterwards.
When building up to my second 5K race, I stopped doing the strides and the mini TTs to just focus on the sub-T workouts. During the second race I felt like 5K pace was a sprint because I hadn't run close to that pace in over 2 months. Then after I did this race, I felt absolutely terrible afterwards. My quad was extremely sore and I had to take 5 days off of running. Even walking felt uncomfortable. Luckily after the time off I felt all better and was able to build back up to full training in about 2 weeks.
In the build to my third 5K race, I replaced one of the normal sub-T workouts with 90 second or 400m reps at 5K-10K pace with 60 seconds standing rest in between. During this race I felt way better. A big PR from the previous race and 5K pace didn't feel like a sprint anymore since I had run close to that pace in training before. I also didn't feel injured after the race and was able to train normally afterwards.
Is anyone else having this same problem where not running close to race pace or not doing speedwork faster than race pace makes them feel very bad during races or feel injured afterwards? In addition to the experience I just mentioned, this has also happened to me about 14 months ago when I raced a 5K well before starting NSM. At this time, I was only running at paces a lot slower than 5K pace. Right after the race, I started getting adductor pain and had to take a week off of running as a result.
At least for me, I just don't see how following the strict version of NSM (3min, 6min, and 10min reps at 15K, HM, and 30K pace respectively) would allow me to feel good during faster races because the paces close to race pace are never encountered during training. Thus, I think including a small amount of faster work without sacrificing the accumulation of load is necessary for my case as I don't want to get sore/injured after every race effort. Is anyone doing this currently?
Agreed, crazy to use it for pacing a race or any run IMO but incredibly accurate for segments of a run over 5 minutes. Great gauge for me to see where I'm at because the power numbers are so consistent and if I'm holding 325 without blowing up, I know I'm fit. I have a lake dam that is flat and a college track but hose are over 1 hour round trips. Looking back 4 years, my power precisely matches my fitness and can be seen every run regardless of pace. Wish it worked on treadmills at inclines which is all my treadmill running.
So you have basically described power working in situations that pace probably would. (Hey guess what, I got fitter and in that time my pace I could hold on flat ground at faster paces, it's a miracle!)
And then describing power not working, in situations where you might actually need it. If ever there was an advert for a Stryd being trash, this is it.
This is what I don’t understand about the whole power debate. Keep in mind I’m a novice to power and all the scientific jargon.
As I understand it, power when cycling is a constant because no matter the conditions or elevation, it measures how much force you are putting through the cranks. So you can gauge your effort based off the power reading.
With running power, no matter how you measure it, isn’t it just a variation of pace or velocity with algorithms to try to filter out the noise? IE it is just trying to measure power by how fast it is moving through the air or running gait, so that is just a variation on velocity?
I fail to see how a foot pod or watch can accurately measure the power you are putting through the ground.
When I have tried to analyze power (purely off my Coros data) it just goes up and down with pace and mirrors gap pace really. So in real time it tells you nothing more than pace does?
I have no clue obviously what he did. I'm just using common sense and if you want to believe he was incapable of breaking 19 minutes in a 5k with his knowledge of endurance training and obvious ability, up to you. NSM is great but it isn't the main reason he got to 15+ minutes. For all the 19 min 5k runners out there doing traditional training and have been stuck for years, NSM isn't going to knock off 3 minutes from your time.
If your a cyclist that gained 10 pounds after quitting and inconsistently train, then yes you can drop 3 minutes and possibly 10 minutes off your time. Lots of details missing in the story and oddly enough almost all the data to validate is gone from Strava prior to him appearing on Letsrun.
I'm going to get his book today because I think he offers some great advice and I'm sure it will be a good read. I'm just being real :)
You have it right however it is more consistent than GPS but otherwise is very similar to our primary runner metric PACE. No need to drink the kool aid. about 5 years ago a Stryd power pod was value for money based off using power over gps pace, but now days with far better watch gps it’s not so true and at times like hills and wind can be random number generator. Whereas wrist based power is ticking a box and correlate to pace (gps) anyway. don’t worry about running power and just use pace for training.
Spoiler alert, can wait until you read that he starting running on bet and his first 5km was soo slower you would have thought he got lost or stopped for a mars bar and pint.
James has two big advantages that has helped him get sub15 for 5km, fist is his cadence, and the second is his massive volume of histrionic endurance that help shape is body.
In the build to my third 5K race, I replaced one of the normal sub-T workouts with 90 second or 400m reps at 5K-10K pace with 60 seconds standing rest in between. During this race I felt way better. A big PR from the previous race and 5K pace didn't feel like a sprint anymore since I had run close to that pace in training before. I also didn't feel injured after the race and was able to train normally afterwards.
Is anyone else having this same problem where not running close to race pace or not doing speedwork faster than race pace makes them feel very bad during races or feel injured afterwards? In addition to the experience I just mentioned, this has also happened to me about 14 months ago when I raced a 5K well before starting NSM. At this time, I was only running at paces a lot slower than 5K pace. Right after the race, I started getting adductor pain and had to take a week off of running as a result.
At least for me, I just don't see how following the strict version of NSM (3min, 6min, and 10min reps at 15K, HM, and 30K pace respectively) would allow me to feel good during faster races because the paces close to race pace are never encountered during training. Thus, I think including a small amount of faster work without sacrificing the accumulation of load is necessary for my case as I don't want to get sore/injured after every race effort. Is anyone doing this currently?
There's quite a number of people doing a 400m based sub-t workout. Should be easy to find details.
For me amusingly it's quite the opposite. Often did a 5x1k (on 2min rest) in 4 flat or a bit faster. Come 10k race day (pace a bit over 4/km), my legs felt heavy and like wading through water. Now those low 4:x paces feel super smooth cause I do em all the time in training, and looking forward to the next race. (only a few weeks into NSM)
Would absolutely encourage to tinker and find out what works best for you, just keep the principles in mind. Sirpoc is one of the most open minded people out there, it's others that sing to a different tune at times.
Sweet spot is important to understand, as all it is doing is maximising the time you have training. It's very difficult to throw much else into the mix when you are using it to it's full potential. Of course it's not the only way a hobby person can train, but it's more than likely the best.
Wrong. Sweetspot training in cycling is defined something in the area around 88-94%FTP. As FTP sits around 90% of CP (critical power), traditional cycling sweetspot training happens around 80%-85% CP, give or take.
Sirpocs training is above 90%CV and has therefore not much to do with traditional cycling sweetspot training.
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